Intro Log: Welcome to the Snave (snake cave)

[hadrielmods]

Who: New arrivals and everyone else!
What: The intro log for March
Where: The colosseum and all around the city.
When: March 10th-15th
Warnings: Snakes! Snakes! It's a snake!

Good morning, new arrivals! Or, well, it's probably morning. The sun is up, anyway. Okay - not the sun, but that ball of light at the top of the cave that functions as the sun, anyway. Whatever. The point is you've woken to find yourself on the floor of Hadriel's colosseum. You may be wondering where you are and what you're doing here, but what you should be wondering is how fast you need to run to get away from a three-headed snake.

You're not the only one who just woke up. Also to be found in the arena, angry and confused, are Runespoors - large three-headed snakes. Only one of the heads is venomous, but all of them are perfectly willing to take a bite out of you if you get too close - or if you annoy it. If you're lucky, an attacking Runespoor may distract itself via infighting between the three heads, giving you time to run. If not, well, let's just hope you can fight off all three heads at once!

But that's not the only thing you might find. Also scattered around the colosseum floor are what look like tasty snacks. Popsicles, cheese, even toast! Unfortunately, if you get hungry and take a bite, you will quickly discover that each and every one of these is actually soap. So that's great. Maybe the Door thinks everyone needs to shower more? You can also find a few that actually look like soap, and if you're really lucky, you might stumble across the rare and coveted 'pile of baby hands' soap.

With luck, you didn't get eaten by a snake or accidentally eat a piece of soap. Once you find your way out of the colosseum there's plenty of other distractions. Feel free to go explore the rest of the city! Find a house, a new monster, a project to help with, or simply scavenge for supplies. Good luck, and enjoy your stay in Hadriel!

► This log covers March 10th-15th.
► Feel free to make your own logs as well!
► All characters arrive with phones that have network communication and the newbie guide installed.
► Please put your character's name and open/closed in the subject line of your starters!

Comments

two-b (or not two-b wowie im so clever)

[skelebro]

[He's tired.

Big surprise, right? A real shocker; the skeleton with a profound lack of motivation on any given day, tired? Yeah, yeah, he gets it. It ain't exactly a deviation from the norm.

Point is, he's more than just not slept. He's drained in every way it's possible to be drained. The week prior weren't real kind to him.

So the last thing he expects, when he manages to drag his coccyx out into the real world again, is someone to be actually manning one of the empty shops for once. He blinks, long and slow. 'Cause skeletons definitely walk and, uh, blink now. Bone's definitely that pliable]

That's new.

I dig it tbh

[trainspotter]

[Walking skeletons are one hundred percent a deviation from, like, eight norms—but Ned knows all about how people get when you look at them oddly or for too long, so walking skeletons are officially just fine. After the three-headed giant snakes, he's pleased enough that this... guy... this individual isn't trying to eat him or anything.

There's a moment's pause, sure, but he's still got that salesman grin in place as he swings his feet off the counter and down to the floor, leaning forward on his elbows.]

You can say that again. So! Let's talk patronage. [And then a gesture, as if to say Now, you. We are playing Store and it's definitely happening, come on.]

[skelebro]

[...huh. Guy knows how to take things in stride. He can give him that much.

He stopped by to look for something important. Something he can't remember being important. Someone told him it was. Someone told him -



sugaͤŗ f̻ṟostͦì͔̕n̟̎́g̃᷆ͤ.

It's important, right? It's important. It's their favorite. It's someone's favorite. Hell if he can remember who told him that, but it's something someone might like. Something someone would...well, uh, maybe 'long as he don't let 'em know it came from him.]

You work here now, 's that it?

[trainspotter]

Let's say I'm considering my options. Take, for example, this shopping district- [If you could call it that, but Ned still gestures widely with his arms, indicating his counter and the store and the other stores beyond at once. All that empty property.] Weak foundation, no management to speak of... It's a disaster waiting to happen.

[Fact. He doesn't care if or for how long this method has been working out, it's clearly just one big business misstep. Anyway.] But that's not really important right now. You are looking for something, and I am offering my very generous help.

[skelebro]

Hate to say it, pal, but we don't really have an economy, either.

[Turns out thaaaaat's politics. There's the potential to just, uh, play along with the exchange. If he were feelin' a little less like something stuck at the bottom of a great cosmic shoe, ready to get scraped off on the sidewalk, maybe he would. Hell, he'd probably be a delight.]

[trainspotter]

Well, not yet. [Fortunately(?), Ned Wynert is an ambitious man... It's good to have goals? He knows that convincing however many people are here to give up free everything and start behaving like there is an economy is probably near-impossible, but god, what the hell do people do around here if they aren't haggling over something?

Dull. So. He taps pointedly on the countertop.] I've been in and out of these shops all day and I am this close to drawing pound signs on scraps of paper so something looks halfway normal. Let a man pretend to work.

[skelebro]

["Fortunately," eh?

There's Richie and his pawn shop, sure, but it's more of a barter and trade kinda deal. A couple hot dogs in exchange for an amazing hideous stuffed bear thing. He kinda lost track of that, after Papyrus -

But if it'll make him feel better, hell. Who's Sans to complain? He'll figure somethin' to trade if it makes it all worth it. He manages a weak huff of a laugh despite pretty clearly lacking lungs, shoulders jostling beneath his jacket.]

Heh. All right, sure. Whaddaya got in terms of food?

[trainspotter]

[Well that is certainly a strange layer to add to this experience, a talking skeleton that also laughs. None of this is possible, but business is business. Ned whaps the counter lightly, with gusto, very thrilled - and he'll finally come out from behind it and make a beeline for the shelves.]

Right over here, we've got- [and he does that wide gesture again, check OUT this FOOD which all seems to be packaged snack-type stuff,] -aboslutely nothing that's ever going to see the right side of a home-cooked meal, as far as I can tell. I haven't seen this much processed food in one place since... ever, so there you go—we've got novelty.

[skelebro]

[Long as it's potentially lucrative, who cares? There's somethin' about that he finds vaguely appealing, if only 'cause he made no small amount of G off a human that trekked through every damn path in the Underground, only to run up against him time and time again, selling fried snow, selling "hot dogs" that weren't hot dogs, selling - whatever he felt like selling, really.

One bony hand reaches up to scratch at his cervical vertebrae. For, uh...some reason. Can't really get itches if you don't have skin, but maybe it's the appearance of the thing.]

You outta your time period, bud?

[trainspotter]

[Ned will start keeping a mental checklist of all the strange skeleton things he notices in due time. That's going on it. He makes a face and another vague gesture at the snacks, like, well...]

It's Ned. And among plenty of other elements I am well and truly out of, that depends on what year it's supposed to be. [Time travel seems like the most possible of wildly impossible things he's encountered so far, so. Sure.] Later than 1868?

[skelebro]

[Sorry, Ned. He's probably gonna start filling up that list with increasingly improbable maneuvers that are occasionally unconscious, but oftentimes performed solely to see people's reactions to 'em. They're pretty priceless.]

Sans the skeleton.

[Not his typical introduction, but hey: the script was always pretty shit. 'Bout time he tore it up.]

Good question. Everything's pretty, uh, anachronistic, you could say.

[trainspotter]

Hmm. You know, I think I had that one pegged before you said anything.

[Cave city? Weird enough. All the weird little... things? Snacks and stuff, the square thing that lights up in his pocket—extra weird.]

At least I'm not the only one. [And... with a glance to the side, away from the snacks,] Do you prefer "Sans" or "The Skeleton"? I wouldn't want to get my manners wrong.

[skelebro]

[Fair enough. And that would mark the...first time anyone's actually asked him that question. Living down here, knowing the number of humans he does now, you kinda get to register the not-terribly-wide spectrum of reactions to meeting a talking skeleton.

That one right there's a first. He crams his hands in his pockets, hitching his shoulders up in a shrug with a fraction of his typical artless exaggeration.]

Just "Sans." [There's people like Connor, who call him "Comic Sans," but he kinda likes that, actually. It's quirky.] You get used to things bein' kinda on a scale of weird 'round here.

[trainspotter]

[Ned can't say he's already met someone more shocking than a talking skeleton simply because he really hasn't, but why start being shocked now when surely, a four-headed snake will be along to try and eat him any minute?

By comparison, Sans is a very nice young skeleton in a hoodie. It's fine.]

You don't say! [shocking revelation......] Well, I'm resilient, but what's really important right now is how you feel about these... chips.

[skelebro]

[Cripes, he hopes not. That'd be a real sorry tail for everyone.]

Chips?

[He's nothing against chips personally. Can't eat most of 'em since they tend not to be made of magic, but they sure are, uh, nice to look at? Aesthetically pleasing to the eyesocket? He gives 'em an appraising look before shrugging.]

You got anything a kid might like?

[trainspotter]

[Something a kid might like... Ned stares at the shelf. He stares at the shelf for a whole, like, thirty seconds, and he is really taking this seriously, but again-]

Bread? [children are starving in the streets of London and they don't have Doritos there, he's lost.]

[skelebro]

[Well.

That, uh. Technically that counts.]

I was thinkin' something a little more celebratory but, uh, bread probably works. Can't taste any worse than fried tennis ball.

[Kids. They'll eat anything. Right?]

[trainspotter]

[Ned mercifully skips his lack of understanding of a modern tennis ball, or, in fact, tennis. Isn't that a rich people sport? Weird.]

Never mind that now. You want a cake, then? No one works around here, so I haven't seen anything like a bakery. Unless whatever's keeping the wheels turning in this city likes to bake and disappear in the night.

[skelebro]

[So, based on everything he's hearing, he's gonna guess - newbie. Almost certainly.]

You're takin' this all pretty well, for somebody who just got here.

[No bakery, as far as he can see. And he's guessin' that, given the way the polls were going, the café idea didn't win out either. Guess they'll have to make do.]

[trainspotter]

Like I said: resilient. [He's got a smirk and a little tip of his hat to go with that, but he'll wig out privately later. It doesn't do any good to make a mess of himself in public, god forbid.]

Besides the snakes, I've seen worse. It helps to set your expectations pretty low.

[skelebro]

You seen worse?

[Gotta admire the man's composure. Or at least his externalization of one. Either way, it's convincing enough that Sans can believe that he's just got an easygoing streak.]

[trainspotter]

Besides the snakes. [He holds up a finger to point that out, like, that is the really important part. Besides the snakes, he's been to much trashier places. Then he nods toward the suspiciously empty store.]

For starters, my city actually has other people in it. Absolutely obscene.

[skelebro]

[Right. The snakes. Well, the Door was due to haul in a new set of things ready to eat everybody alive, on top of the regular newbie parade that rolls around at the beginning every month.]

Hate to break it you, but we've got an awful lotta people here. Most of 'em are even human. [Shocker, right?]

[trainspotter]

You're already letting me down. Can't a guy get a couple days of hope?

[It's still smaller than London, so there's... that.]

[skelebro]

Trust me. You're gonna get plenty of days of Hope.

[That...ah. Occurs to him a bit belatedly that the pun don't necessarily work when the guy has no clue about how the gods run things down here. And explaining the joke don't exactly make it funny but -

Heh, he just ain't feelin' real funny just now.]

Hope's one of the gods down here. Don't let the name fool ya: he's a real stick in the mud.